The February 2022 CaHRU Improvement Science and Research Method seminar was presented by Dr
Harriet Moore on ‘Novel use of ambulance data to identify vulnerable communities in the early days of new pandemic’. Dr Moore is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer in the Department of Geography. Harriet’s main interests include river restoration, environmental behaviour, social disparity, emergency medical services, COVID-19 and mental health. Harriet is a founding member of the EDGE Consortium, a research collaboration between the UK and Ontario, Canada, exploring trends in acute mental and physical health conditions using ambulance 999 call data, including identifying unusual clusters of COVID-19 cases.
The presentation began with a discussion of Social ecological modelling (SEM) and health geography which lies at the intersection of social determinants and 
urban landscape thinking. This was followed by the methods linking ambulance data, socioeconomic, and institutional/landscape/spatial data, where ambulance data were used to create ‘proxy’ measures of socioeconomic, environmental, and landscape factors, that may explain health outcomes.
This was applied to two studies, the first of which was published on ‘Mental health emergencies and COVID-19’ in the British Journal of Psychology Open, exploring the nature of mental health emergencies occurring during first national lockdown compared to the same period a year before. The second was, ‘Characterising unusual spatial clusters of male mental health emergencies occurring during the first national COVID 19 ‘lockdown’ in the East Midlands region, UK: a geospatial analysis of ambulance 999 data (in press). The studies illustrated the possibility of identifying vulnerable communities in real time, with the possibility of addressing factors that might predispose to inequalities and facilitate more transformative thinking, practice and policy.
If you would like to watch the recording of this seminar or access Harriet’s slides please click below. Please contact Sue Bowler sbowler@lincoln.ac.uk to attend future seminars. The next seminar on 23 March 2022 will be given by Dr Zahid Asghar on ‘Using Track and Trace data to model the early phase of the Covid-19 Epidemic in Lincolnshire. Empirical evidence for the rule of six.’
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